The Summer Garden

by Paullina Simons

  “Half a ton! What happened to the grapes?” Tatiana asked.

  “I don’t know. By the time we noticed and came back for them, the road was picked clean, obviously by unemployed migrants looking for food. Though why anyone would be unemployed is beyond me, there’s so much work.”

  “Did Sebastiani yell at you?” asked Anthony, turning around to look at Alexander.

  “I don’t let anybody yell at me, bud,” replied Alexander, “but he wasn’t happy with me, no. Said he was going to dock my pay, and I said, you pay me nothing as it is, what’s to dock?” Alexander looked at Tatiana. “What?”

  “Oh, nothing. Reminds me of that sack of sugar my grandmother found in Luga in the summer of 1938.”

  “Ah, yes the famous sack of sugar.” Dipping a small piece of bread in olive oil, Alexander put it into Tatiana’s mouth. “Not very pleasant, what happened to your grandparents, but I’m suddenly more interested in the truck driver who dropped the sack of sugar in the first place.”

  “He got five years in Astrakhan for being cavalier with government property and helping the bourgeoisie,” she said dryly, as he got up to go.

  “Aren’t you going to kiss me?” she asked, lifting her face to him. “In front of the flannel lepers so they can see your lips open? Never,” he replied, running his hand lightly down her braid. “Stay away from them, will you?”

  As he was walking past the two men, he knocked into their table so hard their glasses of wine spilled.

  “Hey, man, easy!” one of them said, glancing up at Alexander, who slowed down, stopped, and leveled him with such a stare that the man instantly looked away and called for the check.

  October warmly came and warmly went. Though foggy at the day’s edges, November remained mild. Alexander didn’t work in the fields anymore or drive trucks; now he was down in the cellars. He hated being in the dark basement all day, for when he started work it was barely light and when he finished it was just after dark. He worked at the steel fermenting drums or the oak barrels, riddling the sparkling wine behind closed cellar doors and dreaming of sunshine. The night visions still ground him down. He stopped trying to figure them out; their mysticism was beyond his scope and his mystic guide was busy navigating through her own unstill waters. Anthony still crawled in next to her toward dawn.

  The three of them looked forward to Sundays when they had a whole day to themselves. On Sundays they drove around the Bay area. They saw Sacramento and Montecito, and Carmel by the Sea, so blissful and briny—which was a good way to describe Tania also. It was there that she asked him if he wanted to leave Napa and go to Carmel, but Alexander declined. “I like Napa,” he said, taking her hand across the table as they sat in a small café, eating New England Clam Chowder out of a bread bowl. Anthony was having French fries, dipping them into Tania’s soup.

  But Tatiana liked Carmel. “It has no weather. How could you not like a place that has no weather?”

  “I like a little weather,” Alexander said. “For weather we can go south to Santa Barbara.”

  “Let’s just stay put for a while, okay?”

  “Shura . . .” Leaving Anthony to her soup, she got up and moved to sit close to Alexander in the booth, holding his hand, caressing his palm, kissing his fingers. “Husband . . . I was thinking . . . maybe we could stay in Napa for good?”

  “Hmm. Doing what? Harvesting grapes for ten bucks a day? Or,” Alexander said with a small—very small—smile, “selling wine to men?”

  Tatiana’s grin was wide. “Neither. We sell our Arizona land, we buy some land here and open our own winery. What do you think? We wouldn’t see any profits for two years while the grapes grew, but then . . . we could do what the Sebastianis do, just smaller. You already know so much about the business. And I could count the money.” She smiled, her sea eyes foaming. “I’m a very good counter. There are so many little vineyards around here; we could grow to be successful. We’d have a little house, another little baby, live above the winery, and it would be ours, all ours! We’d have a great view of real mountains, like you want. We could go a little north to a place called Alexander’s Valley”—she kissed his cheek—“see, it’s already conveniently named after you. We could start with two acres; it would be plenty to make a living. Hmm? How does that sound?”

  “So-so,” said Alexander, his arm going around her, bending to her exalted, turned-up face.

  Vanishing Dreams of the Valley of the Moon

  Alexander left every morning at six thirty. Tatiana didn’t have to be in until nine. She and Anthony walked the two miles to the winery. After he left, Tatiana sat by the window, paralyzed with fear and indecision. She desperately needed to call Vikki. But the last time she called, Sam had picked up Vikki’s phone.

  This morning Tatiana was bent over the sink, retching. She knew she had to call, she needed to know if Alexander was safe, if they were safe—to stay, to begin to live their little life.

  She called from a public phone near the common dining room downstairs, knowing it was still five thirty in the morning in New York, and Vikki would be asleep.

  The voice on the other end of the line was groggy. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Tania, Vik.” She held the phone receiver so tensely in her fingers, she thought it would break. Her mouth was pressed to the mouthpiece, and her eyes were closed. Please. Please.

  There was scrambling, dropping of the receiver, sharp cursing. Vikki didn’t say what happened, but the things she did say when she finally got back to the receiver were quite sharp and cursy themselves.

  Tatiana backed away from the mouthpiece, seriously contemplating hanging up before she heard another word. She could tell that everything was not all right.

  “Tatiana! What is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing, we’re fine. Anthony says hello.” But this was said in a low, defeated voice.

  “Oh my God. Why haven’t you called Sam, Tania?”

  “Oh, that. I forgot.”

  “YOU WHAT?”

  “We’ve been busy.”

  “They sent Federal agents to your aunt’s house in Massachusetts! They’ve been talking to her, to me, to Edward, to the whole hospital. They’ve been looking for you in New Mexico where you called from, and in that stupid place you bought your stupid land; Phoenix, is it?”

  Tatiana didn’t know what to say. She was losing her breath. Federal agents on the path called Jomax. “Why didn’t you just call him as you promised?”

  “I’m sorry. Why was he there last time I called?”

  “Tania, he’s practically moved in. Where are you?”

  “Vik, what do they want?”

  “I don’t know! Call Sam, he’s dying to tell you. Do you know what Sam said to me when I told him I was going to change my telephone number? He told me I’d be arrested for conspiracy because it could mean I was protecting you!”

  “Conspiracy to what?” Tatiana said in a small voice.

  “I can’t believe Alexander is allowing this.”

  There was silence from Tatiana.

  “Oh, my God,” Vikki said slowly. “He doesn’t know?”

  Silence from Tatiana. Her choices were narrowing. What if there was a wiretap on Vikki’s phone? They’d know where she was, at which B&B, in which valley. Unable to speak any longer, she just hung up.

  She called Jean and said she wasn’t feeling well. Jean complained— money talking—and insisted that Tatiana come in regardless of how she was feeling. They had words. Tatiana said, “I quit,” and hung up on her, too.

  She couldn’t believe she just quit. What in the world was she going to tell Alexander?

  She and Anthony took a bus to San Francisco, where she thought she would be anonymous, but as soon as she heard the streetcar’s stop bell, she knew the sound would be pretty distinct, even to someone living in Washington DC. She went to a wet cold park on the shores of San Francisco Bay, where there were no rails and no clanging, just screaming seagulls, and from a payphone during the late mornin
g called Sam who was still at home.

  “Sam?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s me, Sam.”

  “Oh my God. Tania.”

  “Sam—”

  “OH. MY. GOD.”

  “Sam—”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Sam...”

  “Seventeen months, Tania! Do you know what you’ve done? You’re costing me my job! And you’re costing that husband of yours his freedom!”

  “SAM—”

  “I told you both when he first came back—a debriefing. So simple. Tell us about your life, Captain Barrington. In your own words. A two-hour conversation with minor officials, so easy, so nice; we stamp his file closed, we offer him college tuition, cheap loans, job placement.”

  “Sam.”

  “And instead? During this unbelievably tense time—have you not been reading the papers?—his file, his OPEN file has traveled from my desk, up to the Secretary of State, across to Secretary of Defense, across to the Justice Department. He’s got J. Edgar Hoover himself looking for him! This Alexander Barrington, who was a major in the Red Army, whose father was a Communist—who let him in? You can’t be a commissioned officer in the Red Army without being a Soviet citizen and a member of the Communist Party. How did a person like that get a U.S. passport? Who approved that? Meanwhile, Interpol is looking for an Alexander Belov... they say he killed sixty-eight of their men while escaping from a military prison. And even HUAC got into this. Now you’ve got them on your back, too! They want to know, is he theirs or ours? Where is his allegiance—now, then, ever? Is he a loyalty risk? Who is this man? And no one can find him even to ask him a simple question—why?”

  “Sam!”

  “Oh, what have you done, Tatiana? What have you—”

  She hung up the phone and sank to the ground. She didn’t know what to do. For the rest of the morning, she sat catatonically on the dewy grass in the fog of the San Francisco Bay while Anthony made friends and played on the swings.

  What to do?

  Alexander was the only one who could lead her out of this morass, but he would not run from anything. He was not on her side.

  And yet he was the only one on her side.

  Tatiana saw herself opening the windows on Ellis Island, the first morning she arrived on the boat, after the night her son was born. Not since then had she felt so abandoned and alone.

  After extracting a solemn oath from Anthony not to tell his father where they had been, she spent two hours after they got back to Napa poring over the map of California, almost as if it were a map of Sweden and Finland that the Soviet soldier Alexander Belov once pored over, dreaming of escape.

  She had to steel herself not to shake. That was the hardest thing. She felt so unsound.

  The first thing Alexander said when he walked through the door was, “What happened to you? Jean told me you quit.”

  She managed a nice pasty smile. “Oh, hi. Hungry? You must be. Change, and let’s go eat.” She grabbed Anthony.

  “Tania! Did you quit?”

  “I’ll tell you at dinner.” She was putting on her cardigan.

  “What? Did someone offend you? Say something to you?” His fists clenched.

  “No, no, shh, nothing like that.” She didn’t know how she was going to talk to him. When Anthony was with them, it was impossible to have a serious conversation about serious things. Her work was going to have to be quick and subtle. So it was over dinner and wine in the common dining room, at a withdrawn table in the corner, with Anthony coloring in his book, that she said, “Shura, I did quit. I want you to quit, too.”

  He sat and considered her. His brow was furled. “You’re working too hard,” she said. “Since when?”

  “Look at you. All day in the dank basement, working in cellars... what for?”

  “I don’t understand the question. I have to work somewhere. We have to eat.”

  Chewing her lip, Tatiana shook her head. “We still have money— some of it left over from your mother, some of it from nursing, and in Coconut Grove you made us thousands carousing with your boat women.”

  “Mommy, what’s carousing?” said Anthony, looking up from his coloring.

  “Yes, Mommy, what’s carousing?” said Alexander, smiling.

  “My point is,” Tatiana went on, poker-faced, “that we don’t need you to break your back as if you’re in a Soviet labor camp.”

  “Yes, and what about your dream of a winery in the valley? You don’t think that’s back-breaking work?”

  “Yes . . .” she trailed off. What to say? It was just last week in Carmel that they’d had that wistful conversation. “Perhaps it’s too soon for that dream.” She looked deeply down into her plate.

  “I thought you wanted to settle here?” Alexander said in confusion.

  “As it turns out, less than I thought.” She coughed, stretching out her hand. He took it. “You’re away from us for twelve hours a day and when you come back you’re exhausted. I want you to play with Anthony.”

  “I do play with him.”

  She lowered her voice. “I want you to play with me, too.”

  “Babe, if I play with you any more, my sword will fall off.”

  “What sword, Dad?”

  “Anthony, shh. Alexander, shh. Look, I don’t want you to fall asleep at nine in the evening. I want you to smoke and drink. I want you to read all the books and magazines you haven’t read, and listen to the radio, and play baseball and basketball and football. I want you to teach Anthony how to fish as you tell him your war stories.”

  “Won’t be telling those any time soon.”

  “I’ll cook for you. I’ll play dominoes with you.”

  “Definitely no dominoes.”

  “I’ll let you figure out how I always win.” A Sarah Bernhardt-worthy performance.

  Shaking his head, he said slowly, “Maybe poker.”

  “Absolutely. Cheating poker then.”

  Rueful Russian Lazarevo smiles passed their faces.

  “I’ll take care of you,” she whispered, the hand he wasn’t holding shaking under the table.

  “For God’s sake, Tania... I’m a man. I can’t not work.”

  “You’ve never stopped your whole life. Come on. Stop running with me.” The irony in that made her tremble and she hoped he wouldn’t notice. “Let me take care of you,” Tatiana said hoarsely, “like you know I ache to. Let me do for you. Like I’m your nurse at the Morozovo critical care ward. Please.” Tears came to her eyes. She said quickly, “When there’s no more money, you can work again. But for now... let’s leave here. I know just the place.” Her smile was so pathetic. “Out of my stony griefs, Bethel I’ll raise,” she whispered.

  Alexander was silently contemplating her, puzzled again, troubled again.

  “I honestly don’t understand,” he said. “I thought you liked it here.”

  “I like you more.”

  Chapter Five

  Bethel Island, 1948

  Tilting at Windmills

  They said farewell to the bittersweet sickly heady scent of ripened effervescent grapes, got into their Nomad and left. Tatiana navigated them south and east of Vianza to lose themselves in the flatness of a thousand square miles of the California Delta, amid the islands that were so close to sea level, some would get flooded every time it rained. A hundred miles from the valley of the wine, at the mouth of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, they found tiny Bethel Island and that’s where they stopped.

  Bethel Island. Surrounded by river channels, levees, and antediluvian marsh. Nothing moved in any direction except the herons. The canals were made of glass. The cold November air was still as if it were about to storm.

  It didn’t even seem like part of the same country, yet unmistakably was America. On Dutch Slough they rented a wood shack with a long L-shaped dock that jutted out onto the canal. The house had what they needed. A room of their own, and a bathroom. Across the canal was nothing but plains of fields and t
he horizon.

  “Looks like Holland,” Alexander said as they unpacked.

  “Would you like to go to Holland someday?” she asked, busy nesting.

  “I’m never under any circumstances leaving America. How did you find this place?”

  “Looked at a map.”

  “So now you’re a cartographer, too?” Alexander grinned. “Would you like a glass of wine, my little geologist, capitalist, cartographer?” He had brought a case of bubbly with them.

  The next day at precisely eight in the morning, the mailman on a passing boat barge hooted his horn into their bedroom window. Introducing himself as Mr. Shpeckel, he asked if they would be getting any mail. They said no. But perhaps Aunt Esther wanted to send Anthony a Christmas present? Tatiana said no. They would call Esther at Christmas; that would have to be good enough.

  Even though there was going to be no mail, Shpeckel still came by every morning at eight, tooting his horn into their windows just to let them know they had no mail—and to say hello to Alexander, who in his usual military manner was already up, washed and brushed and dressed, and out on the deck with a fishing line. The canals harbored prehistoric sturgeon and Alexander was trying to catch one.

  Shpeckel was a 66-year-old man who had lived in Bethel for twenty years. He knew everyone. He knew their business, he knew what they were doing on his island. Some were lifers like him, some vacationers, and some were runners.

  “How do you know which are which?” asked Alexander one afternoon when Shpeckel was done with his water route. Alexander had invited him in for a drink.

  “Oh, you can always tell,” Shpeckel replied.

  “So which ones are we?” Alexander asked, pouring him a glass of vodka, which Shpeckel had admitted to never having before.

  They clinked and drank. Alexander knocked his back. Shpeckel carefully sipped his like a mug of tea.

  “You are runners,” said Shpeckel, finally downing his and gasping. “Egads, man, I wouldn’t drink this stuff anymore. It’s going to set you on fire. Come to the Boathouse with us on Friday night. We drink good old beer there.”